Board Room with a view.

New York is easily one of my favorite cities. The last time I was there I had the privilege of eating some really delicious Thai food, drink at an authentic Irish Pub, and scarf down 4,000 calories worth of White House burgers. Where else can you do that?

The Thai food that we had was at Thai Basil on 9th Ave. and W. 56th St. Thai Basil is, or rather was, what seems to be, a repurposed hallway or stairwell turned restraurant with a few small tables. The decor is clean, simple, and in typical asian style. The service was proper, prompt, and delicate.

Chris and Jon had either never had, or seldom had, Thai food before that day. So we were all in for a treat. Chris got squid and something curried. I can’t even remember, now, what I got. But it was delicious. Although 9th Ave. between West 54th and 56th streets is riddled with what I am sure is excellent Thai food restaurants – I can recommend Thai Basil on Manhattan.

The Irish Pub (which could have been either McGee’s on W. 55th or Connolly’s on E. 47th or maybe even a different pub altogether) all I know is that we walked, and walked, and walked before we stopped here for a couple of appetizers and some beer. Speaking of beer Jon had some sort of light beer. I had to fight off the entire staff to keep them from throwing Jon out by his neck and belt loop. While I was wrestling with the barkeep – I managed to scarf down a bunch of stuff mushrooms. Shhh, do you hear that? Ireland is absolutely screaming for Eliza and I to visit.

And the day was just getting started.

We had a lot more walking to do this day. You see, we’re not from New York City and so this is sort of a novel thing. Walking. Everywhere. To the library (which was closed). To another library (which was lame). To the pub, to a restaurant, through Times Square, back to our hotel, to the parking garage, back to the hotel, and ultimately – late at night – to White Castle.

I know what you might be thinking. Isn’t this post supposed to be about No Reservations? Anthony Bourdain’s show about traveling the world and eating some of the best food ever made by human hands? Yes. But if I know Tony. He digs a late night White Castle burger binge. So, off we went. Twelve blocks to the nearest White Castle. No problem. We had already walked miles and miles that day – why not a few more footsteps? We all ordered the exact same meal. Ten burgers and two fries. We ended up giving some of the food to a beggar sitting outside of White Castle (smart man). But most of us finished our double-portions of the greesy, grimey, and some would say disgusting little burgers that leave a wet spot on any table you set them on. I was sick.

In case you didn’t know the sign that you had a successful visit to White Castle is if you leave feeling like you want to puke.

Overall we had a very good time in New York. I always do. That is why I enjoyed seeing a different side of New York than the one I typically get to see in the latest episode of Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations. Tony’s side. In this week’s episode Anthony shows us a portion of New York City that is slowly disappearing, being replaced, rebuilt, torn down, or put up for sale. Sad? Maybe for people like Tony who grew up in and around New York and have a history there. But for those of us that come into the city on occasion to soak up some of the city life, the culture, the food, the architecture, the noises, and again the food – New York is always changing. Always disappearing, being rebuilt, replaced, torn down, or being sold. It is what makes New York, New York.

Photo credit: Jon Christopher.

Date taken: July 15, 2003 – New York City.

In October Eliza and I will be heading to Oahu, Hawaii for a Social Media Summit in Waikiki. Shortly after that we’ll be attending both Podcamp Hawaii and Wordcamp Hawaii.

I don’t think it needs to be said that we’re both looking forward to attending these events.

In November, shortly after our return, I’ll be heading to New York City for Carsonified‘s Future of Web Design conference. I will have some exciting things to talk to developers about, regarding Viddler‘s new Developer Partner Program, and I think FOWD is the perfect venue for these discussions.

We were able to give away a fair amount of Viddler tshirts, in only a few minutes, at the DiggNation Meetup in Brooklyn, New York to those waiting in line for the live taping of DiggNation.  We did have one stipulation, however, that you must wear the Viddler tshirt right now in order to get one.

It was great to see so many Viddler tshirts within the first few rows of the crowd for the entire night.  Even one girl wearing a Viddler tshirt was up on stage in front of, what we’ve been told was, a capacity crowd at Studio B.  So it was a definite WIN.

Hope everyone enjoys their Viddler shirts!

Live taping of DiggNation in Brooklyn, NY. Supposedly 2,000 people!  This was shot from the VIP section, which was pretty close, while I felt sorry for the really big fans of DiggNation being squashed all the way into the back of Studio B.

Joanne from Rocketboom, though they were recording something for Internet Week not Rocketboom,  interviews Brian Brushwood (@shwood on Twitter) from Scam School.

Shortly after this interview Brian did the opening act for the live taping of DiggNation and did an incredible job.  Fire eating, nails into his eye, and Mr. Happy Pants.  He is definitely going to be a big Revision 3 hit.

This guy brought his light-up pins.  He was actually very, very good.  I don’t think he does this professionally but just sorta likes to entertain.

Revision 3 folks are setting up for DiggNation. 1000 people are going to fit in here?

Editor’s note: It turns out that 2,000 people showed up at the door.  The Revision 3 crew really takes setting up everything very seriously and they did a great job accommodating for both the recording of a live podcast but also for a live crowd.

The iPhone helped the cabby find Brooklyn, Ha!

After the conference Ryan Carson, founder of Carsonified, told the attendees they’d make the video available online for free to all attendees because of some of the presentations issues they had.  Turns out the weather was beautiful in New York City and, because of the sunlight shining through the Javits Center, it was hard to see the presentations on screen.  I asked Ryan if we could share it through Viddler in a private way to attendees and he said “Absolutely.”

Long story short, for the first time ever this video is now available to the public whether or not you attended the conference.  And don’t think because these presentations were done in November of 2007 that they aren’t just as valuable today as they were then.  I just watched them all again, as every one did a great job.

Some of the presenters from The Future of Web Design were Joshua Davis, Ryan Signer of 37signals, Jeffery Zeldman, Andy Clarke, Josh Williams, Brian Fling, Jonanthan Snook, Elliot Jay Stocks, Lea Alcantara, Ryan Sims and D. Keith Robinson, Jina Bolton, Cindy Li, and Matthew Patterson.

So here you go, one place to watch all of the video, download the slides, and download the audio from these presentations.  This just saved you $150USD!  Also, watch the Future of Web Design’s Viddler account, as I think there will be much more to see there in the future.

Source: The Future of Web Design, New York 2007 videos.

The GW Bridge costs $8USD to cross (for a car). Better than the $12USD you have to pay to go through the Holland tunnel to the south.

As a way to test mobile photos, again, here is a large orange 9 that sits somewhere in New York City. You might even see Viddler‘s newest Community Leader, Brandice, in there somewhere.

(Source: New York City | Veerle’s blog)

Date taken: January 11, 2008 | Resting on a street lamp on the lower-east side of Central Park in New York City.

Date taken: January 11, 2008 | A passage between 50-something and 50-something streets in New York City.

Date taken: January 11, 2008 | This Coca-Cola delivery man was working hard in New York City.

Date taken: November 08, 2007 | Burger King. INTERNET.

One of the good examples of scaling communities mentioned was Flickr. Obviously they’ve become the community poster-child and rightly so. They’ve put a lot of thought and hard work into making their communities thrive, grow, and in some ways scale very nicely. However, there is still a limit that any community will hit and then it is forced to divide regardless of the feature-set that the service offers.

Online communities reflect their real-world counterparts so lets use New York City as an example of community division. Everyone that lives in New York City is part of a community. They all feel it. They all take pride in it. And in some way or another they all take part in it. However, none of them are familiar with everyone inside of their community. Most of them will never meet face to face. But each one of them has their own much smaller communities that they belong to. Maybe they work at a company, or visit the same coffee shop everyday, or play basketball with their same five friends in the park on Saturdays. Regardless, they’ve divided themselves from the much larger community and created or taken part in a much smaller community inside of the one that surrounds them.

Flickr has given some really great features to its group administrators allowing them to setup their own communities under the much larger Flickr community. That’s the first divide. Flickr has worked really hard to make those communities work well whether there are only two members of that group or ten thousand. But, is there a limit? I feel there is and it might be different for every community.

Once a group gets too large, other groups begin to emerge that may do things very much in the same way as the much larger group – yet they divide in order to find elbow room. To help themselves separate the signal from the noise or even just to pull their friends along. I’ve done this myself. I belong to both the 365days group and the MeToday group. However I’m far more active as a MeToday group member than I am a 365day group member because the MeToday group seems like its my friends getting together and posting their 365day shots. I’m a member of the enormous Macintosh group but I also belong to the Macbook and Apple symbol groups.

On Viddler I’ve noticed other divisions occurring too. We’ve not released any group type features, though we plan to, and yet already groups of people are banding together to create their own social groups. This is done a combination of ways and obviously marking each other as friends is one way, or tagging videos the same way is another. But then we have our forums where small grass roots efforts to form communities (like our newly formed Viral Marketing Team, which is too freaking cool) are taking place. This is the first divide. I’m sure we’ll begin to see others in the near future and I can’t wait for those days to come.

When you put people into the same place with similar interests they all band together with common goals. When that group reaches “the community limit”, they begin to divide while still being loyal to the larger group. I do not think that any set of features can help to stop this and I don’t think too much time should be put into trying to stop it either.

I suppose to best cover what I thought of the meetup, I’ll split it into “the good” and “the bad”. Though – more fittingly “the bad” should be labeled as “things I’d change for May”.

The good

The meetup is free! It isn’t everyday that you can attend a well organized, professional meetup like this without flying across the country, booking a hotel room, and paying some large entrance fee. Granted the meetup only lasts about two hours by design, but that is actually a good thing.

The meetup is structured in such a way that it is interactive, collaborative, and yet has enough constraints to not become a free-for-all where time could definitely be wasted, and focus lost. I saw many parallels between this meetup and Web2Open (or any *Camp for that matter) in that while someone “has the floor”, the audience can steer the discussion in any direction it’d prefer simply by asking questions.

Photo Credit: Eileen Barroso, Copyright: CU

The venue, Uris Hall at Columbia University on the west side of New York City, is nearly the perfect fit for the size of the audience and the meetup itself. A large projector and a podium for the presenter make it probably the best way to demo and take questions. Obviously, this being a classroom, makes it the perfect design for a meetup like this.

Yaron Samid, of Pando, is the meetup organizer and also moderates the meetup. I think Yaron does a superb job of keeping the discussion moving forward, getting the audience involved in the conversation, and treating everyone from presenter to attendee with respect. He also doesn’t try to promote himself or his company while he is moderating the meetup, something I’ve seen done before and never quite felt right. I’ve been to many meetups, expos, and events this year and Yaron is probably the best meetup organizer/moderator I’ve seen yet.

The bad

Or – what I think could be adjusted over the next few meetups.

Each presenter is given five minutes to demo their product/service to the audience, and then the audience is given five minutes to ask questions of the presenter. I like this balance of time – but I’d much rather see less presenters and more time allotted for demoing and Q & A. I think the meetup would benefit greatly by reducing the number of presenters each month by half, and allowing double the amount of time for demo and questions. How can you possibly demo a rich application with hundreds of features in five minutes? Ten minutes may still not be enough time, but at least it’d be enough time to give the highlights. Several of the demos that were given at this particular meetup, were cut short due to time – and although people can just go look at these sites themselves when they get home – I think that being able to show off the product/service in full would make for much better Q&A afterwards.

The Q&A session afterwards was nice, but I almost like the way that the panels handled it at South by Southwest a little better. People approached a microphone and stood in line waiting their turn. Although this venue doesn’t really adapt itself to that – perhaps raising your hand and leaving it up should be the way you’d be “in line”. Or even standing – instead of people just yelling out questions. I saw one person who left their comments on Meetup.com about the event say that they thought some of the questions got to be a little “snarky”. I agree. Though the attendees aren’t journalists trying to make nice – the hard questions are the ones that people want to ask the most. I’d love to see a little more structure here – but overall it seemed to work well.

And finally, there was supposed to be time for “announcements” by the attendees at the end. Some people were looking to hire, some were looking for jobs, others wanted to announce something. I think that this is a huge problem to solve since it’d be nearly impossible to give everyone in the room the time they need. That, and once the presentations and Q&A are over, many people left rather quickly. Perhaps an announcement could be given at the beginning, that any person/company with an announcement should stay afterwards and would be given 30 seconds. Then they’d at least have the opportunity to say something like – “I’m looking for a good graphic designer, please see me if you’re interested.”. This opportunity was lost this time – and I heard many people expressing that they were upset about that.

Photo Credit: Yaron Samid
Geno from AOL and I

Oh, one more thing that I’m just going to inject into this post – the NY Video 2.0 Meetup needs a photographer to attend. Many events on the west coast get great photo coverage – and I’m sure video coverage won’t be too big of an issue – but I’ve yet to find many photos of the event online so I think that someone should step up to the plate that lives in or near NYC.

Note: If you were at the NY Video 2.0 Meetup in New York and had an announcement – run over to Viddler, create a free account, use our “record with webcam” feature and put your announcement there. Be sure to share it with me or tag it with video2meetup, and I’ll try to get it in from of Yaron so that we can help broadcast those announcements to all the attendees.

Conclusion

If you have the chance to get to one of these meetups, I highly recommend it. I had a great time – I love trying to support east coast events like this, and it was a good opportunity to meet people that work in our industry at some level. I’m looking forward to the next time I have the opportunity to meetup.

If you’d like to watch all of the presentations I was able to record them all on video and put them on Viddler. For a recap in text-form, I recommend reading through CenterNetworks coverage of the event.

[tags]new york city, nyc, video 2.0, meetup, yaron samid, centernetworks, video, viddler, columbia university[/tags]
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Rob will be giving a presentation on Viddler and three other presenters will be demoing some of their stuff. I’m looking forward to all of the presentations, but mostly I look forward to making Rob laugh in front of 300+ people! Aren’t I a great friend?

If you are in New York City, or can get there before tomorrow, try to make it to the meetup just to say “hi”. But you’ll need to RSVP pretty quickly, since there are only about 84 “slots” left as of my writing this. You can RSVP via Meetup.com.

Looking forward to Video 2.0 and hopefully seeing you there!

Update: I’ve got Eliza, Mike, and Andrew in my car already. And, “rumor” has it that I’ll have a few more friends coming that you may want to meet – stay tuned…

Another update: Guess who is crashing Video 2.0? Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV. Now you’re getting your calendars out and erasing that business meeting you had tomorrow night, aren’t you?

[tags]video 2.0, meetup, new york city, event, viddler, rob sandie[/tags]
[slug]event-nyvideo2[/slug]